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Cabo Matapalo: A Hidden Paradise

***UPDATE: Casa Tres Peces is no longer available for rent as of October 2014 as indicated by the new owner***

It was hard to imagine how anything could compare to the epic grandeur of the Bali house. Luckily for Jordan and I our adventure was going to continue with his sister Beth and her husband Travis. Beth had planned an amazing stay for us at Casa Tres Peces in Cabo Matapalo, which is in the Osa Penninsula of Costa Rica.

Unfortunately, our house wasn’t going to be ready for us for another night so we spent a night in Puerto Jimenez. We stayed ay the Jimenez Cabinas which were right on the water with pretty nice accommodations for backpacker standards. We had a surprisingly great dinner at a pizza place called PizzaMail.it! Strange name but good quality food! PJ was really nothing to rave about. The highlight for me was when we found an incredible fruit and veggie stand. We bought all our produce for Matapalo for a very low price, and we were able to taste some interesting new fruits such as fresh lychees and granadillos (a strange pod filled with a nasty looking but sweet tasting sack of seeds). Veggies in hand we were ready for our jungle house!

We took a taxi from PJ to Matapalo on a road that went from bad to worse. Although the roads make it difficult to get around deeper in the Osa, the inaccessibility helps to preserve the natural beauty. The house itself was beautiful, built mainly with large tree trunks for the frame. It was an open air two story building with no real rooms, just a few partitions around the bathrooms. We instituted a warning system in which we all told the group, “i’m peeing” or the more vague yet suggestive, “I’m using the bathroom” to ensure no one rounded a corner at an inopportune time. The ocean was right out the front door behind a lush, green rocky coast. The ocean breeze and dense tree cover kept the place extremely cool during the day. We indulged in some serious hammock swinging time, reading, and watching the animals come and go. We saw howler monkeys, spider monkeys, capuchins, and tons of scarlet macaws! At night, the place did get a bit buggy, with enormous grasshoppers, flying termites and god knows what else, but we did have quality bug nets around our beds. With so many bugs at night, and the wildlife being so loud right before sunrise, we found ourselves waking up very early and going to bed early too. It was great to take advantage of the full day of sun and also see the sunrise and sunset everyday! If you were thinking that you might be getting sick of looking at pictures of sunsets and sunrises, feel free to scroll down now!

Although our house was right on the water, the rocky coast meant that we had to walk a few minutes down the road to enter the beach on a big sandy stretch. The beaches were gorgeous and almost completely empty! We saw a couple people on the beach over the few days but it felt like our own private beach. Jordan explored more of the rocky terrain along the ocean because he went fishing with one of the caretakers, Victor, almost everyday. Although he didn’t catch anything, Jordan enjoyed practicing his Spanish with Victor and seeing some incredible views from the rocks. One morning, Jordan decided to skip the pre-sunrise fishing session with Victor and we woke up to find him walking back from the water holding a huge red snapper on his line. He insisted that we take the fish, so Jordan made a beautiful ceviche out of it for us all to share. It was a great way to start the day.

Victor’s wife, Gabriella, had recently moved to Costa Rica from Austria. She was working towards becoming a nature guide and we were extremely lucky when she offered to take us on a hike to a nearby waterfall one morning. We would have absolutely gotten lost without her guidance and she was also able to find a few tiny frogs we would have missed along the way. The hike turned out to be longer than we thought but was well worth the beauty at the end. We are now able to cross “swim in and around a waterfall” off our bucket lists. The water was incredibly clear, and felt amazing after our hike.

The hammocks, waterfalls and beaches were great, but the best park was spending time with Beth and Travis. We cooked, we laughed, we heard each other using the bathroom and truly bonded. Cabo Matapalo truly did not disappoint!